I belong to an exclusive club that most of you have no hope of ever qualifying for. It’s called People of An Embarrassingly Advanced Age Who Can’t Drive. Whenever I meet someone else in their 30s who never mastered this basic life skill, we share an instant bond.
I would like to make it clear that the reason I can’t drive is not because I failed my test. Nor am I anything like that German teenager who made headlines by losing his driving licence after 49 minutes. (The guy celebrated passing his test by speeding, and is a perfect example of why no teenager should be allowed behind a wheel, in my opinion.) No, I decided I was best placed waiting for self-driving cars, after attempting to learn about 15 years ago.
My first lesson, you see, was in Beirut – which is a great city, but not somewhere I’d recommend learning to drive. People race around as if they are extras in The Levantine Fast and the Furious. I also wouldn’t recommend taking a lesson from an instructor who speaks only Arabic when your understanding of Arabic is rudimentary, as mine is. The guy yelled: “Go left!” at me, I thought he meant go right. And, well, that was how we ended up on the motorway and almost died.
The good news for those of us without a licence is that not driving is becoming more common, and is perhaps even cool. Far fewer young people are learning to drive: the number of British people under 25 taking driving tests has fallen by 18% in the past decade, according to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. This is largely because of cost, but also because in an increasingly urban and digital world, cars are no longer the vehicle of liberation they once were. So, non-drivers of the world unite. There is much to be said for getting the bus.
